Sometimes good things happen on very short notice. In November, Lacy found that Laura Zakroff, aka Tempest, would be in town for a few days with The Ghost Project. Well, let’s not let THAT opportunity go to waste! Time was short and money was tight for many people right before the holidays, though, so two days of workshops was condensed down into one out at Amani Jabril’s little home studio. It turned out to be just the right venue for an intimate and fun workshop.
The morning was devoted to THE FABULOUS FORBIDDEN ART OF FLOORWORK. Floorwork is never, ever going to be my strong point, or much of any kind of point at all, not with my 56-year-old knees, but it doesn’t hurt to learn what I can about it. Tempest was good at showing us variations and how to modify standard moves to make it possible for almost anyone, even me, to add a little floorwork to their dance.
After lunch, which I contemplatively ate alone in Amani’s studio while the others ran out to grab food, Tempest shared her way of connecting traditional Oriental dance with Gothic dramatic aesthetic to produce her powerful expression in dance. I’ll never be a Tempest-type dancer — I don’t have her sense of drama, either — but I can certainly take what she taught us and adapt it to my own way of dancing.
